Exactly a year after issue three. Finally we had to accept we could only get Machinegun out once a year.

Nice wood burning cover. I did the wood burning. The wallpaper background on the cover of issue three was based on a funny, true story. There was this guy who was a tattooer, either he couldn’t read or he was nervous or something, and he was going to put on a tattoo of an eagle with a banner that had the word “tattoo” in it. The eagle was facing to the right and he wanted to flip it over so it was facing left. He did that, which also flipped over the word. He didn’t notice because none of the letters looked wrong, but now it said “oottat” in the banner. The customer checked it in the mirror but in the mirror it looked right to him. The guy tattooed it in. It’s true…the tattooer’s name was Cam, or Mac or something. Hey, it really happened.

Other than the cover, issue four got kind of serious. There was more information about capacitors on tattoo machines in issue four than you’ll find anywhere else.

After two years, our project machine, the Green Monster, got dialed in. It ran smooth with a proper stroke length and on low voltage. At 300 Hz, it was way too fast to tattoo with, but the idea was to learn about frame geometry, stroke length, spring thickness, armature bar weight, coils, and capacitors and we did that. We also proved you couldn’t learn all that without a meter.

Best Line in Issue Four

Bill Baker talking about suppliers. It was Lyle Tuttle who is referred to as a funny fella (Editorial, p.9).

A funny fella once told me that no matter what he had done during his career as a tattooer, at least he had never become a supplier.